Since the start of the Mafia franchise back in 2002, the crime-focused mobster games have often been compared to Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto series. Fans directly pit screenshots, gameplay, animations, and map sizes between different entries in each long-running series against one another. But according to Hangar 13 president Nick Baynes, the devs working on Mafia never bring up GTA during development.
As part of a new, in-depth oral history of the Mafia franchise, IGN spoke with several developers behind the sandbox games, including some who worked on the very first Mafia entry released over 20 years ago. And during IGN’s oral history interview, GTA came up during a conversation about Mafia 3 going fully open-world as a reaction to Mafia 2 players wanting that kind of game and industry trends at the time.
Baynes didn’t share anything too salacious, despite fans always pitting the two franchises against each other online, though oddly he was hesitant to actually name GTA or GTA 6 in his answer.
“I think that genuinely at the studio, we’ve got our own path,” Baynes told IGN.
“It genuinely never ever comes up in conversation as a touchpoint or steering our strategy or anything like that. I think obviously there’s a lot of stories about that game out there right now because something’s coming out later this year! But yeah, genuinely, I think it’s an internet thing. It’s not something the studio looks at. So I think I’m afraid there’s not a rich vein of answers to give you for that.”
And to be fair, Mafia and GTA are more different than you might expect if you haven’t played them. With the exception of Mafia 3, the games are more linear and cinematic than the wild, open-world adventures found in modern GTA games. So it has always been a bit odd when fans directly compare them to prove one is better than the other.
Still, I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I entirely buy Baynes’ answer. I find it very, very hard to believe that the devs working on the various Mafia games didn’t talk about GTA at all during development. Especially when working on Mafia 3, a game that feels the most like a GTA-like open-world adventure. Keep in mind, both Rockstar and Hangar 13 share a parent company in Take-Two Interactive. All that said, Mafia: The Old Country was a big hit, and that was largely because it was a more linear, focused game. So I expect future Mafia games to stick to that formula instead of chasing GTA and its massive open worlds.